Indycar photo by Joe Skibinski

Ed Carpenter was hoping to accomplish more today, but weather and a crash of one of his team cars shortened his plans. The open test at Indianapolis Motor Speedway was shortened by rain and an incident involving one of Carpenter’s team cars.

Rinus Veekay crashed just 10 minutes into the open test, spinning low in turn 1 and then hiiting the outside wall. VeeKay broke a finger, but has been cleared to drive.

Of his second year driver, Carpenter said,

“He did so well at Indy last year, but got a little bit ahead of himself today. Didn’t quite have a feel for his balance, got a little bit too aggressive in one. I know he’ll bounce back. He’s shown that he can bounce back from unfortunate circumstances in the past. I know he’ll be ready when he gets back out there.”

VeeKay may not be on track Friday. The crew woill have to rebuild the car. Carpenter said they are unlikely to use the backup car since it is the car they will run in the first four races of the season, which begins next weekend at Barber Motorsports Park.

Carpenter and Conor Daly, the third member of Ed Carpenter racing, kept to their plan.

“Essentially we each just got a baseline run in. I only did nine laps. Happy the car has had some pace, we were able to get a good draft. At the same time it doesn’t really mean anything after just a brief period of running, and not everybody out there yet.”

The weather interruption didn’t bother him. After the constant schedule changes last year, this just another hiccup. Carpenter said about the shortened day,

“Don’t worry about it too much. Weather and changing schedules is something we’ve all gotten quite adept at over the past year. Looks like it’s going to be a better weather day tomorrow. The six hours will go quick. Some of the things we wanted to do, it would have been nice to have our session, lunch break, go back out and do some longer changeover types of things that we may have to scrap till we come back. If we can be efficient, we can still get through everything we wanted to, at least the big items.”

I asked Carpenter if he was able to run in traffic enough to see whether the aerodynamic changes improved the ability to follow and pass.

“No, not yet,” he replied. ” I got a one-car tow, but it was about seven seconds out, so not really a good enough read to start to fully establish that.We had some of the parts on, not all of them. There are a lot of different configurations out there. Definitely need more time. There’s really no group that formed in the short amount of time we had. Still plenty to learn. But I’m sure we’ll get through that tomorrow.”

Tomorrow’s weather calls for a high of 77 degrees with a small chance of rain. The temperature is closer to what conditions on race day could be.